Commentary: The episode mainly serves to give some more familiarity with the Shadow ships. Aside from that, it fleshes out the Sheridan character a bit and establishes that he's not happy just being a desk jockey. That's a familiar idea from the original Star Trek series, where Kirk is miserable anywhere but at the helm of a starship. This episode was in fact written by D.C. Fontana, who wrote many of the original Star Trek episodes.